Journal Screening Settings: On the Privacy tab of the My Account Settings page, use the Comment Screening drop-down menu to select the type of accounts you wish to screen, and click the Save button to apply your settings for all future comments. Once you have established your comment screening settings, comments made by users who fall into the category you have selected are screened by default.

Privacy: Comment screening is not intended as a way for you to have private or protected conversations in comments. Since you must unscreen a comment to reply to it, you should email the person directly or send a private message to have a private conversation. Even if a comment is unscreened, replied to, and quickly rescreened, anyone who has enabled tracking on that entry can receive the text of both comments via email notification.

Visibility: A screened comment is only visible to the user who posted the entry, the person who posted the comment, and, if the entry was made in a community, any maintainer(s) of the community. Logged out or nonregistered viewers cannot see screened comments.

Screening: A comment can only be screened or unscreened by the user who posted the entry (and, if the entry was made in a community, the maintainer(s) of the community).

Recent Entries: When you view your Recent Entries page while logged in, the link indicating the number of comments for the journal entry only lists the number of unscreened comments. If an entry has only screened comments, the link to read comments appears with the entry, but shows 0 (zero) comments. This extra 0 comments link is not visible to other people who view your Recent Entries page.

Comments: By clicking the link to view your journal entry, you will see the entry with all of its comments, screened and unscreened. Each comment has a button or link to screen or unscreen it. In certain styles, a screened comment's title bar has a different color.